PLANTING. 85 



the trees are past danger of deer or cattle ; and an equal number of acres 

 to those thus laid open, may be enclosed and planted. The remaining 

 14,068 acres belong to the crown in fee, and will always be kept enclosed* 

 There are 6211 acres of other freehold land belonging to the crown, which 

 are also appropriated to the growth of timber, making in all 38,979 acres, 

 the whole of which have been enclosed and planted within the last twenty 

 years. In New and Dean forests, Hainault forest, Whittle wood forest, 

 and Wychwood forest, there are open woods or coppices of considerable 

 extent, containing trees of all descriptions, from ship timber, down to sap- 

 lings j but the number of acres so covered, or the number of trees occu- 

 pying the surface, appear to be unknown. 



The soil of the royal forests of Britain contain almost every variety of 

 soil, deep strong clay, rich deep loam, light loam on freestone gravel, 

 bog, &c. The quantities of these different soils should be estimated. It 

 is quite true that a field of ten acres may contain two or three different 

 varieties of soil ; but that is no substantial reason for not classifying the 

 quantities on which to found a practical plan of management, so as to 

 obtain the largest and speediest return of produce of the best quality, 

 and that every portion of the land be occupied to the best advantage. 

 Without an estimate of the spaces of the different soils, no accurate calcu- 

 lation can possibly be made of the produce the lands in question ought to 

 and would afford under the most judicious culture ; and consequently 

 there is no check whatever to the practical management, but that of vague 

 opinion. 



As the most judicious, because the most profitable and certain in the 

 result of obtaining the largest quantity of timber of the best quality in the 

 shortest space of time, on a given space of land, the preparation of the 

 soil for the reception of the plants by paring and burning the surface, 

 afterwards trenching, and manuring when possible, and taking from the 

 soil thus prepared an ameliorating fallow crop the season before planting, 

 has been urged at pages 22, 27, and 39, as a general principle of culture 

 for the soils of the nature specified. But if this mode of culture be there- 

 fore so superior as it is proved to be for planting lands under ordinary 

 freehold tenure, how much more beneficial, or rather essential, must the 

 adoption of it be in cases such as of those belonging to the crown, where 

 the rights of common render it imperative to open the fences of the young 

 plantations to stock or to sheep and deer in seven or nine years from the 

 period of planting. The trees so cultivated will in that period be com- 

 paratively out of danger, and the ultimate object, that of timber of the best 

 quality the soil is capable of rearing, secured. But besides these advan- 

 tages, that of affording profitable employment to labourers out of work, 

 in the parishes adjoining the lands in question, and at a season of the 

 year when labour is most scarce, cannot but add powerfully to the reasons, 

 sufficient of themselves, already offered on this head ; besides the valuable 

 example for imitation by the public which the Government would, in this 

 important branch of rural economy, afford, and by it encourage those 



An account of the quantity of land, cultivated and waste, in the British Dominions, 

 including Scotland and Ireland, and the British Isles, according to the evidence of Mr. 

 William Cowling, before the Emigration Committee, in 1827. 



46,522,970 15,000,000 15,871,463 77,394,433 



